July 2, 2008

Comparing the states has more importance than you'd think in figuring out how a Sunshine State U.S. senator divides work and play--especially a hunter and fisherman.

In our nation's capital, at work, you've got easy access to bird fields in Shenandoah, Croaker and Spot in the Potomac, and some of the best sweet corn in the world.

I've shown lots of woodsy pictures of north Florida on this blog; I think it's time for more hot shots of rural Virginia.

Personally, I'm partial to the Old Dominion. A bad day in the Northern Neck beats a good one in Washington, DC.

I love how this tree branch looks like a crooked demon hand from Halloween.

In the city, especially in a pressure cooker like Washington, you measure time by how long it takes to get to places by taxi or metro, whether a light is red or green, when a particular vote will be taken on the floor of the Senate, and every day is sliced into at least ten pieces by a scheduler. In the countryside, time is more of an amorphous sea like this wheat field. You wait around long enough and the green shade will turn to a parched brown. There is the green season, the brown, and the harvest. Life on the farm.

July 1, 2008

Some nice down-home, home-grown rural politickin' in the Old Dominion State. Former Governor Mark Warner works the crowd and signs autographs. Once you're governor, the title never leaves you.

Warner left office in 2005 with something like a 70% approval rating. I don't think it's decline since. Nobody would every call him a backslapper or a good ole boy, but he can communicate in Richmond as well Appomattox , as you can see here. Warner can talk cell phones and software manufacturing the way Lawton Chiles talked turkeys and raccoons.

It's doubtful Mark Warner could ever play a tune on a fiddle, but folks in Southwest Virginia seem to love to watch him try.

This clip is just a wonderful look at vote-getting handshake to handshake.